Wiesenthal Accuses Vancouver Janitor of Having Directed Death of 300 Jews

March 12, 1971

MONTREAL (Mar. 11)

A 59-year-old Vancouver janitor has been accused by Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi-hunter, of having personally directed the machine-gun killings of 300 Jews while serving as chief of the Ukrainian auxiliary police during World War II. Wiesenthal, head of the Vienna Documentation Center of the Federation of Jewish Victims of the Nazi Regime, said the murders took place at Rudolf’s Mill in Stanislav, near the Polish-Russian border. He said in Vienna that the Canadian government was morally obligated to act to bring the Janitor, Ivan Dimitrevich Chrobatyn, to justice.” I don’t know if he is a Canadian citizen,” he went on, “but if he is a Canadian citizen the Canadian government must bring him before the courts, because it cannot protect a criminal. If not, he must be deported to Germany. We will wait for the next step.”

Chrobatyn denied he was ever a police chief, a member of an execution squad or even a member of the German Army. He said that although he had worn a soldier’s uniform in a Ukrainian Army division that fought with Germany against Russia, he was there only as a cook feeding 3,000 men and had never used a rifle. “I swear to you what I say is true,” he said. “I have never killed a man in all my life.” Wiesenthal has asked the Canadian Jewish Congress to seek government intervention in the case. Saul Hayes, Q.C., executive vice president of the CJC, said here yesterday that the case has been referred to a committee of the organization in Toronto. But he said that if Chrobatyn is a citizen. the charges against him will probably be dropped, as a recent test case indicated that citizens cannot be extradited unless they made fraudulent statements on their citizenship applications and the board of the Immigration Department votes for extradition. A spokesman for Justice Minister John Turner refused to speculate on possible government action, explaining: “We have received no official notification of any charges laid or messages passed on.”